While this will get you a VR-ready system capable of pushing most of the games at ultra 1080p and 1440p gaming, according to AMD, you will also get a couple of great games to play once you are done, the new Doom and Civilization VI.

According to details, the promotional Holiday Bundle will be available until December 31st and gives you all of this for US $449.99, a good US $170 discount on the original price. MSI also threw in a US $15 mail-in rebate as well.

It is good to see Intel and Radeon in the same story and if earlier rumors are true, this might not be the end of it.

The Critics’ Choice Awards, presented by the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, honor the finest in cinematic and television achievement and this is a good way for Intel to promote its VR technology.

The 3D Voke VR stream will be available via Voke's GearVR app that can be downloaded via Oculus Store or by selecting the Google Cardboard feature in A&E’s iOS and Android apps.

Previously, Intel and Voke made NFL Make Game Highlights available in VR and we are quite sure that there will be quite a few other.

Qualcomm’s introduction of a top notch 48 core 10nm server chip means that Intel’s milkmaid can no longer serve up expensive milk from its cash cow Xeons and the lot.

It’s years since Intel had any credible rival on the server front, but if Qualcomm’s hopes, as reported here, turn into reality, then Chipzilla can wave its stonking profits goodbye.

Unless, of course, Intel in sheer desperation, pulls a rabbit out of its financially top notch hat and can waste its shareholders’ money with some stunning acquisition that will leave its new competitors reeling.

We wouldn’t put that past Intel. It has a habit of both shocking and being shocking.

But there’s more to this than meets the eye. Although Qualcomm has clearly humiliated Intel by beating it on the nanometer and processor front, there are many other considerations to take on board.

The first is the supply channel. Imagine if you are an ODM and you get approached because Qualcomm produces better chips than the Mighty Intel. You have to weigh up your relationship with Chipzilla and you had better not hack them off, particularly if a big chunk of your server business is Intel based.

Going down a stage further. Imagine if you are one of the worldwide Intel distributors and you take the Qualcomm route. Will Intel just sit on its ass while it sees its business sap away? We all remember the “Intel Inside” campaign where lots of money was thrown to keep people on the Intel pathzilla.

And going further down the supply chain, to the corporate level, imagine if you had an enormous data center all powered by Intel server chips. Can you imagine telling your chief technology officer (CTO) that there’s something better on the scene and cheaper, and faster.

And this last point is actually Intel’s Achille’s Heel. Driven by costs, driven by artificial intelligence, driven by cars, driven by profit, corporate customers might well take the Qualcomm route.

And that’s exactly what Intel’s milkmaid should contemplate while she is pumping the four udders of the milch cow.

Although the information is scarce and there is certainly no confirmation from either Intel or AMD, the rumor is that these two companies have signed a licensing deal that should put AMD GPU in future Intel CPUs.

The rumor was started by Kyle Bennett, Editor-in-Chief at HardOCP, who is not known for posting information without something to back it up. HardOCP Forums, said that "The licensing deal between AMD and Intel is signed and done for putting AMD GPU tech into Intel’s iGPU. Intel in no way wants this to be public."

This is a big surprise since AMD and Intel are always competing for the CPU market. AMD has done similar licensing deals before, with the latest being for x86 IP signed with THATIC (Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co., Ltd), a Chinese joint venture that will build SoC for the Chinese server market and with a total value of US $293 million.

Intel and AMD are tied with Intel with x86 patent agreements so, if this rumor is true, it won't be anything new. Intel has been struggling to create a decent iGPU so it would make sense for Intel to make such a deal with AMD.

Intel has been in trouble with Nvidia for infringing some of its GPU patents, which ended with a settlement in 2011 where Nvidia got US $1.5 billion over six years and access to some Intel microprocessors patents but also left it without a DMI/QPI bus and x86 license. A deal with AMD could probably solve Intel problems in that part of the market too.

Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that either company will confirm this rumor but we guess that the cat will be out of the bag eventually, at least as soon as we get a better look at Intel's future CPUs that could end up with AMD Radeon IGP.

The Z270 SLI Plus will be the new high-end motherboard in the Pro series, featuring a 10-phase VRM, drawing power from a 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. It comes with four DIMM slots and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (x16/x8/x8) slots, two Turbo M.2 NVMe ports, six SATA 6Gbps ports and plenty of other features, including MSI's own Audio Boost and Mystic Light RGB implementation.

The MSI Z270 SLI Plus will also feature MSI's Steel Armor on the two main PCIe 3.0 slot as well as both DIMM slots and M.2 slots. It will probably also include MSI's recently detailed M.2 Shield feature that should cool down the M.2 SSD and prevent SSD throttling.

The MSI Z270 SLI is pretty much identical but has a different cooling system, probably without a hefty heatsink on the VRM part and lacking the Steel Armor feature on DIMM and M.2 slots.

Unfortunately, MSI is keeping all the details for the official launch expected in January 2017 alongside Intel's new Kaby Lake desktop CPUs.

One of the world’s most popular chipsets for gigabit broadband modems, Intel's Puma 6 chipset, suffers from at latency jitter so bad it ruins online gaming and other real-time connections.

Apparently, Intel knows about the problem and is preparing a firmware update to correct spikes of lag and bouts of packet loss that repeatedly flare up in home internet hubs.

Of course there is nothing to make sure that you have this chipset - your ISP will push it out but you should look out for a firmware update and modem reboot coming your way.

The list of modems powered by Intel's Puma 6 chipset is legion. There are the Arris Surfboard SB6190, the Hitron CGNV4, and the Compal CH7465-LG. Some ISPs even rebadge them like Virgin Media's Superhub 3 and Comcast's top-end Xfinity boxes. It is also under the bonnet of some Linksys and Cisco routers.

Intel bought the Puma family of chips from TI in 2010. It made sense as a good way of getting its chips out there. For example, the DOCSIS 3.0-compatible Puma 6 has an Atom x86 processor. This is where the problem comes from. Intel forgot to reconfigure the x86 software to handle routers properly. So the CPU in the modem is taking on too much work while processing network packets. When this happens a high-priority maintenance task runs and takes over the processor, causing latency to increase by at least 200ms.

This means that six percent of packets are dropped. It makes internet gaming and other online real-time interaction useless. The bug has been getting more noticeable since Puma 6-powered modems started shipping in large numbers.

The fruity cargo-cult Apple is rumoured to be having second thoughts about its relationship with Intel and is starting to regret its decision to install Intel modems in half its iPhone 7s.

Apple originally intended the Intel deal to keep Qualcomm from getting too big for its boots and charging it too much for its modems. The only problem was that the Intel modems only worked on some networks and were not as fast. To fix this problem Apple throttled the Qualcomm modems so that all the iPhone 7s were uniformly bad.

Now, North Capital Markets’s industry analyst, Tom Sepenzis, has claimed Intel’s inability to catch up to Qualcomm is forcing Apple to rethink its partnership.

In a note to investors he wrote:

“There have been several reports over the past month that have compared the speeds associated with both the INTC and QCOM modems in their respective iPhone models, with INTC coming up short. While Apple will certainly keep a second source if possible, it isn’t going to do so for too long if it has to handicap half of its devices.”

He added: “This should give QCOM a path towards recapturing all of Apple over the next two years if Intel doesn’t find an answer.”

Intel is some way from creating a comparable unit that it can supply for next-generation iPhone handsets. Of course it was one of many rumours that is circulating about the iPhone 8. These are to make up for the fact that the iPhone 7 is the Vista of iPhones and Apple does not want to give the impression that it has given up on smartphone inovation. However, the Intel deal was rather strange.

Chipzilla has seen how NAND flash storage rising and memory makers are speeding up 3D NAND flash product development and thought “I’ll be ‘aving some of that”.

The dark satanic rumour mill has churned out a yarn which suggest that Intel will start mass producing new 3D NAND flash products in 2017. It will have special flavours for the datacenter, professional, consumer and embedded markets.

This will cause a major headache for Samsung, SK Hynix, Toshiba and all those Chinese players who thought that they would be able to make a bob or two from the technology.

While Intel could conceivably stuff it up, its arrival in the market might send Samsung executives heading for their drinks cabinet to pour themselves a stiff one.

Intel will start with expanding its PCI Express-based solid state drive (SSD) product line, following the releases of its DC D3700 and D3600-series NVMe SSDs in 2016. Then it will add a top-end series with a lot more storage space in the third quarter of 2017, featuring a 2.5-inch size, U.2 interface and storage options of 2TB, 4TB and 8TB.

For February and March 2017, Intel's DC P4500/P4600/P4600 LP/P4500 LP will enter mass production with an end-of-life-cycle is set for the first quarter of 2019.Intel will add DC S4600/S4500-series and the entry-level DC S3110-series to its SATA-based SSD product line in the second quarter.

For the professional market, Intel will launch PCIe/NVMe-based Pro 7600P and SATA-based Pro 5450s in the fourth quarter. For the consumer market, following the release of the 600p in September 2016, the CPU giant will release a BGA-version 600p and SATA-based 545s in the third quarter of 2017.

For the embedded market, Intel has prepared the 5430S-series for April 2017 and an M.2 form factor-based version of the 5430S for July 2017. In the third quarter, Intel will release the 20nm MLC-based E 6500p, and existing E 5400s/5410-series will both enter EOL in the first quarter of 2018, while the E 6000p will stop supply in the third quarter of 2018.

Along with 3D NAND flash, Intel will be pushing its Optane SSD using 3D XPoint technology. Already, engineering samples have been sent out. It is expected to see them entering mass production in the second quarter of 2017. These SSDs will be ear marked for high-end servers and PC products.

Intel has not made money from its SSD business yet. Analysts however expect this to change next year when 3D XPoint memory arrives in 2017.

Although Intel's 7th generation Core Kaby Lake desktop CPUs won't officially launch until January next year, during the last few days we have seen plenty of leaks, including detailed performance benchmarks as well as some overclocking results for the flagship Core i7-7700K SKU.

The flagship Core i7-7700K SKU is a quad-core CPU with support for Intel Hyper-Threading and works at 3.2GHz base and 4.5GHz maximum Turbo clock. It has 8MB of L3 cache, 95W TDP and comes with Intel HD Graphics 630 IGP.

There have been quite a few leaks coming from the usual Chinese sources, which had a chance to test it out on a currently available MSI Z170 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard with the latest BIOS update. The test shows that the Core i7-7700K is indeed faster than the Skylake Core i7-6700K flagship, which can be attributed to a higher clock. The CPU was tested in Cinebench R15 CPU test, Fritz Chess and 3DMark 11 Extreme, scoring 913, 17049 and 10838 points, respectively.

This shows that while it might not be interesting to those coming from Skylake architecture, it is still a decent and expected performance upgrade for those coming from older Intel CPU architectures.

In addition to those, Zolkorn.com had a chance to check out some overclocking details, showing that it is possible to hit 5.0GHz at just 1.29V. Although this is a decent overclock, the CPU was hitting 100C, which means that you will need some serious cooling power in order to keep the new Kaby Lake flagship under control.

The performance results obtained in some of the tests at Tomshardware.com, shows that there aren't any noticeable IPC improvements as its performance is the same as an overclocked Core i7-6700K CPU, with most improvements coming from a higher clock.

Tomshardware.com put its sample through a decent amount of benchmarks and games, as well as checked out the power consumption, temperature and overclocking potential, again proving that it is just a minor update from earlier Skylake architecture, with somewhat better overclocking potential but just as long as you can keep it cool.

The big update with Kaby Lake will be the new Intel 200-series motherboards that will bring certain improvements but as it is the case with CPUs, these should be coming in January 2017.

The move will put intel chips under the bonnet of their joint effort to produce self-driving vehicles by 2019.

Chipzilla is also working with German luxury car maker BMW AG and Mobileye on self-driving technology. However so far, the chip maker has not made much of a dent in the autonomous vehicle market.

Glen De Vos, Delphi's vice president of engineering announced that Intel will provide a "system on chip" for autonomous vehicle systems that Delphi and Mobileye are developing together.

UK-based Delphi is talking with established automakers and new or niche vehicle companies, such as manufacturers of commercial vehicles, interested in automating vehicles, De Vos said.

The system Delphi and Mobileye are developing would likely come to market first in a commercial vehicle operating in a limited area, such as an airport shuttle or a ride-hailing service, DeVos said.

Delphi is testing its autonomous driving technology in vehicles in Singapore. By the end of this year, Delphi hopes to choose a city in the United States to launch a test fleet of self-driving cars during 2017, De Vos said. The company is also looking for test site in a European city.